Coaches' loyalty is limited

Published 7:00 pm, Sunday, January 17, 2010

The word "loyalty" should be removed from the vocabulary of college football coaches like Lane Kiffin.

What Kiffin did to the University of Tennessee football team, university, administration and fans is an abomination — leaving after just one season to return to the University of Southern California.

Loyalty for a coach like Kiffin is to himself and to winning football games. It's not to the student-athletes, nor the university. And loyalty to oneself is selfishness or greed.

And what was USC Athletics Director Mike Garrett thinking? The only person he was thinking about was himself, with no consideration for Tennessee or its players.

When we're under pressure to produce, our true self comes through. Coming off a sub-standard football season, losing coach Pete Carroll to the NFL, and with two NCAA investigations (involving Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo) hanging over his head, Garrett was feeling the pressure. And then he went out and hired a coach in Kiffin who had been charged with at least six NCAA secondary recruiting violations in one year's time. You would think that Garrett would want somebody with a squeaky-clean reputation.

Any high school player being recruited by the USC football staff, has to be thinking in the back of his mind, "Can I really trust these guys? They bailed out on Tennessee. Will they do the same to me?"

Stay tuned to the continuing saga in Los Angeles and how well the Garrett/Kiffin marriage works. My dark side says I hope it doesn't.

* Moving on to new Central Michigan head football coach Dan Enos. Now, I want you to know that I am not picking on Enos in any way. The words that he said would surely be spoken by any new Mid-American Conference coach, whether in Mount Pleasant, Kalamazoo, Ypsilanti, or any other MAC city.

The MAC is either a burial ground for coaches, or a stepping-stone. I guarantee you that every single new coaching hire at a MAC football school is thinking the same thing: "I want to go on to the next level." (i.e. Urban Meyer, Brian Kelly, Butch Jones, Bo Schembechler, etc.)

At Enos's introductory press conference, it would have been truly refreshing if he had been brutally honest and had said, "I'm going to give everything I have to CMU. My first goal is to win 13 games (12 and a bowl) and then to graduate as many players as we can. But, if a chance comes to move to a more prestigious program, I'm going to leave."

Instead, we got, "I plan on being here for a long time. CMU is a place I can see myself and my family being at for many years."

Look, coaches can't be truly honest about their desires for advancement because it would kill them on the recruiting trail. Rival coaches would use this honesty to influence recruits. If Enos had said he hoped to eventually move up to a more prestigious program, a rival coach would be able to tell recruits, "Enos has no plans to be at CMU for your full four years, so don't go there."

Let me throw out a possible scenario. The Michigan State football team goes 5-7 each of the next two years, and head coach Mark Dantonio receives his walking papers. In those two years, CMU goes 11-2 each year along with winning two MAC championships and two bowl games.

How long do you think it would take Spartans' Athletics Director Mark Hollis to head up US-127 to Mount Pleasant to try to hire Enos, who is widely regarded as a great recruiter?

* Division I football coaches are evaluated on one thing: winning games. Very few people in our society really care how many football players graduate. Instead, we want to be associated with a winning program because that gives us a sense of worth and says, "We're better than you because we beat you."

If universities, and fans, cared about graduation rates, then Charlie Weis would still be the head football coach at Notre Dame.

According to NCAA.com, the Notre Dame football program has an average graduation rate of over 94 percent over the last three years, which is well above the NCAA average of 67 percent for all Division I football programs.

I feel sorry for the student-athletes that these coaches have wined and dined and asked to make a commitment to play for a university, when the coach is not willing to make that same commitment.

Recruits need to ask themselves, "Will this institution really prepare me for life after football? Does it have the academic programs that I?m interested in? Is it an environment where I would enjoy spending the next four years?"

Hopefully, recruits will follow the lead of Monte Vista High School (Calif.) senior quarterback Brett Nottingham, who originally committed to UCLA, but this past week changed his mind and will enroll at Stanford.

In an article on maxpreps.com, Nottingham said, "This is an important life decision, and Stanford academics are in a league of their own. I've been thinking about my future a lot lately and the more I thought about it, the more I kept envisioning Stanford a part of it. A degree from Stanford will set you up for life."

Interestingly, UCLA head coach Rick Neuheisel didn't take the news very well when he learned that the first-team All-California selection would not be a Bruin next season.

Is Neuheisel really interested in what's best for Nottingham, or is he only concerned about winning football games?

The bottom line is, I hope that high school football recruits will seriously consider their options when looking at different universities. Choosing a school based on the coach can only disappoint. Just look at the Tennessee football players.